Part 15 (1/2)

PAGE 103

_smiles at you--grins:_ Read the account of this habit in the opening chapter of the author's ”Wild Life Near Home.”

CHAPTER X

TO THE TEACHER

This chapter and the next go together--this for the lover of wild life, the next for the lover of adventure. The spring freshet is one of the most interesting of the year of days for animal study--better even than the day after the first snowfall.

But more than this, let both chapters suggest to you how primitive and elemental the real world is after all; with what cataclysmal forces the seasons are changed. As summer often pa.s.ses into autumn with a silencing frost that rests like a hush of awe over the land; so winter often gives way to spring with a rush of wind and tidal powers that seem to shake the foundations of the world. To feel these forces, to be a part of all these moods, to share in all these feelings--this, too, is one of the ends of nature-study.

CHAPTER XII

TO THE TEACHER

I should like to repeat here the suggestions in ”The Fall of the Year” for this corresponding chapter. I will repeat only: ”that _you_ are the teacher, not the book. The book is but a suggestion. You begin where it leaves off; you fill out where it is lacking.” For these are not all the sounds of winter; indeed they may not be the characteristic sounds in your neighborhood.

No matter: the lesson is not this or that sound, but that your pupils _learn to listen_ for sounds, for the voices of the season, whatever those voices may be in their own particular region. The trouble is that we have ears, and literally hear not, eyes and see not, souls and feel not. Teach your pupils to use their eyes, ears, yes and _hearts_, and all things else will be added unto them in the way of education.

FOR THE PUPIL

I

It is the stilling of the insects that makes for the first of these silences; the hus.h.i.+ng of the winds the second; the magic touch of the cold the third.

II

The voice of the great spring storm should be added to these, and the shriek of the wind about the house.

III

You should not only _hear_, but you should also _feel_ this split--pa.s.sing with a thrilling shock beneath your feet.

V